Changes to Permanent Drones

2017·07·21by yclepticon

Hello everyone. We’d like to announce some changes to permanent drones that will take effect tomorrow on Universe Reset. The upshot is that healer permanent drones have had their HPS output nerfed by about 50%, down to around 23,000 for endgame variants. For exact numbers, please consult the spreadsheet linked below (which also gives some helpful augmentation suggestions). We have undertaken this nerf as part of a larger repositioning of permanent drones as anti-player emplacements, as opposed to general-purpose defense assets that often rival bases in defense utility. For this reason, we are trying to balance drone healing power to around the level that a player ship can achieve. Since endgame drones were healing in the 40-60k range, a nerf of roughly 50% was required.

There’s one other change to permanent drone mechanics that was decided on ages ago but never got coded until now. When we revamped Augmenter Tweaking, we buffed all non-base augmenters by a factor of two to compensate. Accordingly, we decided to stop allowing non-base augmenters to be inserted into permanent drones via Astral Injection, but the code for this has only just been prepared for patch. We do regret giving you all such late notice on this change. If you were planning to use non-base augmenters on your drones and have been thrown off by this, we would be happy to do an exchange at no cost to you. Just submit a ticket within the first two weeks of the universe and specify which non-base augmenters you would like to have exchanged for base augmenters (tech 10 and lower).

About yclepticon

Hi, I'm Anil. I'm a long-time player turned developer–you may know me in-game as enkelin. I am Star Sonata's lead content developer, which means that I run weekly dev meetings and make sure that any proposed changes to the game receive proper review before going live. I also oversee the Star Sonata Press Corps, a group of players who sit in on dev meetings and help us connect with the community on key issues and concerns. If you are interested in joining the Press Corps, drop me a line!